Building for a friend cpu/gpu/ram/mobo advice

Associate
Joined
16 Mar 2016
Posts
815
Location
Rubber Dinghy Rapids Broo
Hi I have a friend who likes to play euro truck/farm simulator and cities skylines.

He has a 6700hq laptop with a 950m and 8gb of ram and they all run very poorly, and he removed cities skylines from his laptop because it wasn't worth playing with such poor performance.

I am trying to help him build a pc that will run at 1080p high settings.

To help I have a spare ryzen 1700 with cooler and 2x8gb of 3000mhz cl14 gskill ripjaws V ram if this can be used in the process.

I was wondering whether it would do the job as I have read that cities skylines is cpu and ram demanding, but does not use more than 3 cores.

I was thinking that a 1050ti could run Farming simulator and eurotruck from what I can find, as it is a gpu that I can at least find available for a price that isn't ridiculous? It appears to be around £100 used. Or should I look to get something better?

The main issue is the motherboard. My friend in the future could look to upgrade to an ultrawide when gpu prices come down and there is availability, hopefully in the next year so he wants a motherboard that he could potentially drop in something like a 5600x for the demand of the extra resolution.

Are b550 micro atx motherboards backwards compatible to a 1700? Or are there older micro atx motherboards that are available to buy brand new that can upgrade to zen 3?
 
B550 isn't technically compatible with Zen or Zen+ so Ryzen 1000/2000, however I've seen people using 2600x etc with B550 boards so a 1700 could potentially work too. You'd probably be better looking for a different card as a 1050ti really isn't that great of one. Maybe a used GTX970/980 or something. A little dive into reddit and I found this
KTkKdcU.png
I know its the ATX version but I was actually going to recommend a B550M Mortar as I really really like mine. Great for everything, front usb type c, 5v/12v rgb and great vrms.

Good to you see you helping a friend out with this tho.
 
Hi I have a friend who likes to play euro truck/farm simulator and cities skylines.

He has a 6700hq laptop with a 950m and 8gb of ram and they all run very poorly, and he removed cities skylines from his laptop because it wasn't worth playing with such poor performance.

I am trying to help him build a pc that will run at 1080p high settings.

To help I have a spare ryzen 1700 with cooler and 2x8gb of 3000mhz cl14 gskill ripjaws V ram if this can be used in the process.

I was wondering whether it would do the job as I have read that cities skylines is cpu and ram demanding, but does not use more than 3 cores.

I was thinking that a 1050ti could run Farming simulator and eurotruck from what I can find, as it is a gpu that I can at least find available for a price that isn't ridiculous? It appears to be around £100 used. Or should I look to get something better?

The main issue is the motherboard. My friend in the future could look to upgrade to an ultrawide when gpu prices come down and there is availability, hopefully in the next year so he wants a motherboard that he could potentially drop in something like a 5600x for the demand of the extra resolution.

Are b550 micro atx motherboards backwards compatible to a 1700? Or are there older micro atx motherboards that are available to buy brand new that can upgrade to zen 3?
I'm not great at comparing laptops to desktops, but from what I'm aware, the 6700HQ was pretty high-end and Skylake's gaming performance when only a few cores are being used is actually superior to a first gen Ryzen.

I wonder if the RAM is more of a bottleneck than the CPU, since those sound like open world games which can easily eat a lot of RAM.

If you're sticking with the 1700, I'd get a B450 Mortar Max since they're available for £60 at the moment.
 
I'm not great at comparing laptops to desktops, but from what I'm aware, the 6700HQ was pretty high-end and Skylake's gaming performance when only a few cores are being used is actually superior to a first gen Ryzen.

I wonder if the RAM is more of a bottleneck than the CPU, since those sound like open world games which can easily eat a lot of RAM.

If you're sticking with the 1700, I'd get a B450 Mortar Max since they're available for £60 at the moment.


Thanks that sounds like a good deal.
 
B550 isn't technically compatible with Zen or Zen+ so Ryzen 1000/2000, however I've seen people using 2600x etc with B550 boards so a 1700 could potentially work too. You'd probably be better looking for a different card as a 1050ti really isn't that great of one. Maybe a used GTX970/980 or something. A little dive into reddit and I found this
KTkKdcU.png
I know its the ATX version but I was actually going to recommend a B550M Mortar as I really really like mine. Great for everything, front usb type c, 5v/12v rgb and great vrms.

Good to you see you helping a friend out with this tho.

Thanks i'll look for a 970/980. Unfortunately I sold my 1070 a few years ago otherwise I think that would have been ok.
 
Back
Top Bottom